Today’s Tag and Release feature at Bungie.net uses the term ‘New Mombasa’ to show off some pretty cool environment shots – swing by to see the ones they found, or use the All Tags tool to find your own!(Louis Wu 17:46:46 UTC)

A couple of new vids for you, courtesy of Bungie’s Comm Chatter:

• Inside Gaming posted a Halo 3 ODST Special – Bungie’s a week late noticing it, but we can’t complain too much, we’re learning about it from them. (If you’ve played through the game, there’s not a lot here you’ll need – but if you’re new to ODST, it might be a worthwile video.)
• Arby ‘n’ the Chief: Endgame (Part Four) has MC unhealthily focused on a knife as the solution to all his problems.

Go watch!(Louis Wu 17:44:11 UTC)

Just a couple of Halo comic mentions today – Saturday’s Ctrl+Alt+Del ‘Silly’ was ODST-related (thanks, Black Six), and the most recent Grin + Bear It (Bip Bop Oh) has gone live at Hawty McBloggy’s. Laugh over lunch!(Louis Wu 17:30:38 UTC)

Hawty McBloggy found another pretty amazing Xbox 360 case mod – you’ll need quite a lot of space for this puppy (it won’t slide into a standard AV rack between your receiver and your TiVo), but MAN it’s cool-looking. Go see!(Louis Wu 17:27:26 UTC)

Nice – Buy.com’s price on Halo 3: ODST has dropped to $43.24, with free shipping. If you don’t have a copy, this is a great deal! Thanks, Chairhome.(Louis Wu 15:33:21 UTC)

So I was cleaning out my office this weekend, and I ran across a copy of The Official Xbox Magazine that I don’t think I ever read. It’s the June 2009 issue, and one of the cover teasers is ‘The Halo You’ll Never Play!’ It’s an article about Allen Murray’s GDC 2009 presentation – and it included info I didn’t remember seeing before. (We’d mentioned the talk a few times – IGN posted a pair of articles on March 26, and Kotaku posted one on the same day – but none of them contained pictures of ‘Guardian Forest‘, the level that got cut from Halo 3, or of the Guardian itself, a new enemy with a laser in its chest that you could steal and use. (The OXM article included pictures, and made me hunt some more.) It turns out Bungie’s posted Murray’s PowerPoint slides on their Publications page, back on March 31 – and we neglected to mention it! (The images linked above were extracted from that presentation.) If you haven’t perused the full publications list… you should. They are fascinating glimpses inside the development of Bungie’s games… and there are some real gems buried inside as background art, as well.(Louis Wu 13:30:23 UTC)

Jensen stopped by with a newly-envisioned Elite armor – he calls it ‘tank armor’, with weapons integrated into the suit. Read his post for rationale behind the suit – along with a whole bunch of in-progress renders. Great stuff!(Louis Wu 12:38:32 UTC)

Heh – looks like ODST might have some of the same tricking opportunities that Halo did – there seems to be plenty of places where death/soft barriers don’t apply. Check out this hog launch to the top of one of the skyscrapers on Uplift Reserve. Thanks, Ducain.(Louis Wu 12:37:26 UTC)

Some discussion was raised on our forum yesterday about the possibility that the F-99 Wombat (the unmanned drone that Bry’s been taking wonderful pictures of) might not be built to scale, since it’s not really intended to be seen up-close. Bry confirmed that the version in the cutscene is the same size as the ones in-game (it is), and Omega used pan-cam coordinates to calculate some actual dimensions… and yep, it looks like it was built to scale. Nice!(Louis Wu 12:32:53 UTC)

Rampancy.net user shadeslayer has posted an arrangement for ODST’s Prepare to Drop for Piano and Alto Sax, in Notepad format. You must be logged in to R.net to see the download link.(Louis Wu 12:28:35 UTC)